In the Japanese paperfolding art of origami, cutting the paper is frowned upon. But in 1981, Masahiro Chatani, professor of Architecture at Tokyo Institute of Technology proved that papercutting could indeed produce stunning pieces of art.

Along with his colleague Keiko Nakazawa, Chatani developed Origamic Architecture, a variation of kirigami (itself a variation of origami where cuts were allowed), where you only needed an X-acto knife and a ruler to create complex 3-dimensional structures out of a single sheet of paper.

Origamic Architecture sculptures range from (the relatively simple) geometric patterns to famous buildings' facades. It's like 3-D pop-up greeting cards, but much, much more complex. While looking at the examples below, keep this in mind: everything's done with the simple cuts of the knife.

Simple cuts can result in stunning geometric shapes - from Gerry Stormer's gallery (click the artist's name for more):